2018 Tanglewood reviews

Article updated Nov. 16, 2018, by Dave Conlin Read

Tanglewood photos from the 2018 season, dubbed by the BSO “Summer of Lenny in the Berkshires,” which peaked on Aug. 25 with a kaleidoscopic array of artists and ensembles from the worlds of classical music, film, and Broadway. The entire first half of the program is dedicated to selections from such brilliant Bernstein works as Candide, West Side Story, Mass, and Serenade. Music from the classical canon very dear to Bernstein’s heart-selections from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn and music by Copland, plus a new work by John Williams, makes up a good portion of the program’s second half; the finale of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony brought the program to a close.

Article updated Sept. 2, 2018 by Dave Read

Wynton Marsalis is every bit the national treasure that Leonard Bernstein was and it seems that we in the Tanglewood orbit keep getting luckier. This was dubbed the Bernstein Centennial Summer, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra segment of it was bookended with concerts by artists representing the city of New Orleans, currently in the midst of its own Tricentennial celebration!

The opening weekend of the 2018 Tanglewood season included Harry Connick, Jr. in concert and the Sept. 1 concert by the Wynton Marsalis Quintet and Ellis Marsalis Quintet closed it in a manner that makes an already memorable season unforgettable! (Producers for the Sept. 2 show in the Shed requested no reviews so – mum’s the word!)

Somebody ought to profile those two quintessential American musicians – wouldn’t you love to read a study that compares and contrasts the lives and work of Leonard Bernstein and Wynton Marsalis? To all appearances they are utterly different, yet exactly alike as American musical artists.

Donald Hall, their late poet peer, who also performed in the Koussevitsky Music Shed (as a guest on the 2008 A Prairie Home Companion), wrote about “…poetry’s continuous assertion that opposites are identical.'” I don’t think he’d mind if we substituted ‘music’ for ‘poetry,’ in order to properly align these Tanglewood Fellows, Bernstein and Marsalis.

The quintet headed by Ellis Marsalis, father of Wynton, played a flawless opening set, almost equally divided between covers and original material. The patriarch of the first family of New Orleans musicians (son Brantford has also headlined shows here) is an impressive presence with a deft but airy touch on the piano, with a minimum of talk between pieces.

Wynton Marsalis’ deep Tanglewood roots

This was a home game for Wynton, who recalled being in the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Bernstein for a performance of the Prokofiev Fifth in 1979. Marsalis, while singling out Gunther Schuller and trumpter Roger Voisin, besides Bernstein, for praise, stated simply that Tanglewood changed his life. Before the concert, we heard someone talk about the 1999 program here with the BSO and Seij Ozawa plus Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra combining to perform the Peer Gynt Suite, which Duke Ellington adapted for jazz orchestra.

The concert attracted a lage Lawn audience, but a rather sparse gathering in the Shed. Perhaps Ozawa Hall was the more suitable venue for this program?

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Article updated August 26, 2018 by Dave Read

The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood, the culmination of the Summer of Lenny in the Berkshires, was a three hour variety show that wrapped up with the rafter-rattling Finale from Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection.” But, since it would’ve been too tidy for this event to dissolve into silence, host Audra McDonald returned and began singing Somewhere, from West Side Story, and by the time the curtain did drop, that chestnut had been made refulgent by Ms. McDonald, three operatic soloists, a dozen gang members (Jets, Sharks), a few conductors, scores of instrumentalists, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Tanglewood is where Leonard Bernstein’s nonpareil career got crucial early boosts from Serge Koussevitsky and Aaron Copland in 1940, and where it ended in 1990 with his final performance, six weeks before his death. The Leonard Bernstein Office asserts that the centennial celebration includes more than 2,300 events around the world. It is such a big deal that it was the Google doodle for August 25, 2018:

Tale of two Tanglewoods

There is some irony in the realization that Highwood House, setting for Highwood’s Ghost, the piece John Williams composed for the Bernstein Centennial, serves today as a sort of dividing line in the stratification of the Tanglewood audience. It’s the Jets banding together against the Sharks; it’s Upstairs, Downstairs. One audience nestles under a canopy to nosh canapes over by Highwood House, while the other one swarms the lawn around the Shed!

The event was recorded by PBS for airing in December. We chatted with a member of the film crew, wondering if he had worked any of the televised Tanglewood shows, such as the Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Gala or Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble? That was a lucky question because it turns out he was on the crew hired in 1995 by Sony to record a Wynton Marsalis program – which many people hoped would lead to something along the lines of Leonard Bernstein’s wildly popular and successful Young People’s Concerts, which aired on CBS from 1958 until 1972.

We will add photos, video, and copy to this report, so please, stay tuned!

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Article updated August 21, 2018 by Dave Read

The Sunday afternoon (Aug. 19) program on the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2018 Tanglewood calendar has loomed in anticipation since I filled out my summer concert list months ago, especially because of the rarity of the Bernstein selection, Three Meditations from Mass, for cello and orchestra, which has been performed at Tanglewood only once, in 1998, with Yo-Yo Ma on cello and Seiji Ozawa conducting. Excerpted from Mass, which he composed for the 1971 opening of The Kennedy Center, the Meditations for cello and orchestra was premeired there six years later, with Bernstein conducting the National Symphony and Mstislav Rostropovich on cello.

This program opened with An Outdoor Adventure by Bernstein’s original Tanglewood instructor Aaron Copland, probably second only to Serge Koussevitsky in his importance to Bernstein’s development as a musician.

John Williams celebrates Leonard Bernstein with Highwood’s Ghost

Oh Man – Koussevitsky, Copland, Bernstein… sometimes it is hard to introduce a Tanglewood article without bumping into ghosts! Nothing to be frightened about, so long as the orchestra on stage is comprised of Tanglewood Fellows, the women and men soon to matriculate from the Tanglewood Music Center into careers in the world’s leading orchestras. Fifty years from now, dozens of musicians in this orchestra will be delighting audiences in grand music halls and outdoor venues around the world. Time and mortality may be buzzkills in many settings, but they are key to the alchemy of music, our balm no matter the season – grief or joy.

Nelsons and Ma – pas de deux

For all the auditory brilliance radiating from the stage today, I’m logging a visual memory – the apparition of Andris Nelsons and Yo-Yo Ma, following both Highwood’s Ghost and the Three Meditations, each acheiving a pose in assymetrical opposition to the other, becoming perfectly still, their gazees locked until sound had vanished.

And speaking of the visual, after today, Highwood’s Ghost is my favorite John Williams film score! To hell with Hollywood, and Mammon’s other labs, a far more entertaining movie streams across the silver screen of the mind while listening to this latest addition to the Tanglewood canon.

Here are the composer’s note on Highwood’s Ghost:

“Highwood is one of the grand old houses of the Tanglewood campus, which stands today with dignity and grace as it has since 1846.

I well remember one night, as Lenny was making his way up the first stairwell, exclaiming “this place is haunted!” Coincidentally, I’m told that a number of people who worked at the house over the years have also felt Highwood to be haunted. In any case, it may be expected that Lenny, genius that he was, might have had a special ability to receive transmission from the sphere of spirits and signs.

I thought a little piece about this history might be fun, and provide the unusual combination of harp and cello an opportunity to set the stage for an ectoplasmic visit.

The music, as you may notice, is a little haunted by Lenny, but it is not suggested that he is the ghost. You’re invited to listen and make your own guess as to the identity of this seemingly very pleasant spirit… I have my own ideas.”

The program concluded with another piece particularly suited to be both a workout and a showcase for the student orchestra, Concerto for Orchestra by Bela Bartok – just as the 2012 The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert did, with the late Maestro Rafael Frubeck de Burgos conducting.

Yo-Yo Ma joins Andris Nelsons for Copland, Bernstein, Williams and Bartók

Sunday, Aug. 19, 2:30 p.m. Koussevitsky Music Shed

• The Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert
• Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra
• Andris Nelsons, conductor
• Yo-Yo Ma, cello
• COPLAND An Outdoor Overture
• BERNSTEIN Three Meditations from Mass, for cello and orchestra
• John WILLIAMS New work for cello and orchestra (world premiere)
• BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Article updated Aug. 11, 2018 by Dave Read

Tanglewood on Parade, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s annual fundraiser in support of the Tanglewood Music Center, with a schedule of concerts, recitals and events all afternoon and culminating with a gala evening concert, was visited by late afternoon thunderstorms that sent music lovers as well as all manner of picnicers skedaddling. Nobody was surprised by the storm; an alert was sounding when we arrived around two fifteen, gates were closed and patrons were told to leave the lawn, to take shelter in the Shed.

That warning expired soon as the storm passed by, the sky overhead cleared and we scurried back and forth from the press entrance near Seiji Ozawa Hall all the way over to the Theatre near the main entrance for the 2:30 concert by the Tanglewood Music Center percussion fellows. But the Theatre was empty – even despite being a designated shelter from (the) storm! The only person there was another drum fan; I walked over to the main gate, looked at the flyer being offered to entering patrons and saw the percussion concert had been re-scheduled for Ozawa Hall. But why wasn’t anybody at the Theatre, the designated shelter, while storm warnings were sounding and people were being shooed off the Lawn?

The concert by TMC percussion fellows was a fascinating display of the variety of percussion instruments – or more accurately, they showed that in the world of a skilled percussionist, anything can be used as one. In the first piece, the drummers began with quiet drumstick taps on the rim of the snare drum and finished with soft palm taps on the thigh! In between, the standard drum kits got thorough workovers and the audience got very excited.

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Article updated August 10, 2018 by Dave Read

Joshua Bell resembled an athlete who knows he’ll soon be sent into the game during the opening moments of the Wienawski Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, the feature selection of the Aug. 5, 2018 program in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk. He swayed gently side to side, with shallow knee bends – not warming up or stretching, just keeping loose, staying calm, then, on cue, he fairly exploded into action.

There is a wonderful contrast between what you see and what you hear – Bell never looks frantic or frenetic, all his gestures and bends and twists are neat and balanced, betraying the work of bone, sinew, and muscle. What the ear perceives, however, is not rooted in anatomy, emerges not from the realm of the empirical but from the metaphysical house of beauty.

Dima Slobodeniouk conducts Borodin, Wieniawski and Prokofiev featuring Joshua Bell

Encores are rare in the classical music world, and the Tanglewood audience almost always rises with a rousing ovation and shouts of “Bravo!” that bring about one or two “curtain calls” when the soloist and conductor return the compliment. Today, there was an encore – Mr. Bell nearly immolated his burnished fiddle playing a selection from The Red Violin by John Corigliano, from the eponymous movie.

The concert opened with Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from “Prince Igor,” a splendid number sure to sound familiar to even the short-haired low-brows in the audience, because of its prominence on those late night TV ads for monster hits from the classical repertoire.

Sunday, Aug. 5, 2:30 p.m. Koussevitsky Music Shed

• Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Dima Slobodeniouk, conductor
• Joshua Bell, violin
• BORODIN Polovtsian Dances
• WIENIAWSKI Violin Concerto No. 2
• PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Article updated July 17, 2018 by Dave Read

Attending the Sunday afternoon (July 15, 2018) program in the Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood was no easy matter; every bit of it commanded your attention, from Mendelssohn’s beautifully familiar Italian symphony, through Yuja Wang’s dazzling performance of Beethoven’s 1st piano concerto, to the how-fit-in-these-fraught-times composition from the celebrated culture warrior Leonard Bernstein, Chichester Psalms.

• Yuja Wang, piano
• Rafi Bellamy Plaice, Boy soprano
• Tanglewood Festival Chorus, James Burton, conductor
• MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 4, Italian
• BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1
• BERNSTEIN Chichester Psalms

Besides being the summer of Lenny, another theme at Tanglewood has been brilliant pianists whose names rhyme. Yuja Wang (Lang Lang opening night) performed the Beethoven piano concerto with an ethereal artistry; I listened to a few minutes of the first movement with eyes closed and was startled upon opening them that people were responsible for the sounds I was hearing.

An unfortunate ancillary matter accompanied Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, the most awaited composition on the program. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the all-volunteer organization that became beloved under nearly fifty year leadership of founding director John Oliver is in upheaval. Since assuming leadership last year, James Burton has instituted practices that have insulted and angered TFC veterans. It is reminiscient of the furor at the Tanglewood Music Center that came about in the fourth decade of Seiji Ozawa’s overripe tenure running the whole operation.

Nontheless, it was a beautiful performance of a piece that is quintessential Bernstein, this composer with such a catholic appetite – treating ancient Hebrew texts with sounds and rhythms of a mid-twentieth century American ghetto! Not that he would have needed to be egged on in that direction, but the commissioning Anglican cleric mentioned to Bernstein that “… would be very delighted if there was a hint of West Side Story about the music.”

How many in the large audience were wondering his reaction to politics today, this artist who hosted a dinner party during the Nixon administration to raise money for the legal defense of several Black Panthers?

Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, at Tanglewood

Thursday, July 12, 8 p.m. Seiji Ozawa Hall

• Instrumental Ensemble
• Charles Prince, conductor
• Alexandra Silber, soprano
• Shuler Hensley, baritone
• Vocal Ensemble, Jamie Bernstein, directo

The July 12 All-Bernstein program in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, selections from the Bernstein Songbook, followed by Trouble in Tahiti, was one of those events that require your attendance if you intend to get the most out of the local cultural scene. Leonard Bernstein was a member of the inaugural class of the Boston Symphony Orchestra‘s summer music school in 1940, now known as the Tanglewood Music Center. He was a protege of founder Serge Koussevitsky, became his conducting assisstant, and then rocketed to fame as assisstant conductor the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1943. He was the un-rehearsed last-minute replacement for Bruno Walter in a Carnegie Hall concert broadcast nationally that was praised on the front page of the next day’s New York Times.

His final conducting performance, with the BSO in a program of Britten and Beethoven at Tanglewood on August 19, 1990 was celebrated in newspapers around the world in articles that mentioned the coughing fit he suffered in the midst of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Diagnosed with emphysema in his fifties, he announced his retirement from conducting five days before his death Oct. 14, 1990.

The celebrated and re-calibrated acoustics of Seiji Ozawa Hall, which commands the Leonard Bernstein Campus, may not be ideal for selections such as on this program; whereas the singers made good and pretty sounds, it could seem an effort to discern the semantics of various songs. Maestro Bernstien’s daughter Jamie was easily understood in her role introducing the Selections from the Bernstein Songbook, though, and her direction of Trouble in Tahiti was happily applauded.

Hotels in the Berkshires

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Article updated July 2, 2018 by Dave Read

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones played a generous and rousing concert in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood on Friday, June 29, 2018. We hesitate to describe the performance as firey or electrifying, because then the band may be blamed for the heat wave that followed in their wake and three days later has not let up. This show comes a little past the midway point in the Popular Artist Series and was the first of four that we’ll attend in a six day stretch, about which we’ll write more when it’s over! Meantime, here are photos from the show:

2018 Tanglewood schedule

The 2018 Tanglewood schedulefeatures a season-long celebration of the centennial of Leonard’s Bernstein’s birth, culminating in the Aug. 25 Bernstein Centennial Celebration hosted by Audra McDonald, with Maestro Andris Nelsons, four guest conductors and soloists Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, and others.

Hotels near Tanglewood

Find hotels near Tanglewood with user reviews, check amenities, nearby attractions, availability and then book your room reservations at these lodging establishments through our partner, International Hotel Solutions (IHS), the leading provider of secure online hotel reservations.

Tanglewood tickets and box office information

Tickets for the 2018 Tanglewood season available through Tanglewood’s website, www.tanglewood.org, SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office at 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston MA.

Getting around the Tanglewood campus

The Tanglewood campus, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center comprises several hundred acres in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge. It is the location of the Koussevitsky Music Shed and Ozawa Hall, where hundreds of thousands attend concerts and a variety of events, including picnics. We always advise new visitors to arrive early and take their daily walking exercise wandering the beautiful Tanglewood grounds. This dynamic map of the Tanglewood grounds includes photos and information for such points of interest as Aaron Copland Library, Highwood Manor House, The Glass House, and The Lion’s Gate.